In recent years, mobile communication services have expanded and increased in popularity around the world. Many advanced networks offer wireless mobile communication service for voice calls, mobile messaging services (e.g. text and/or multimedia) and data communications. The data services, for example, enable surfing the world wide web, e.g. via a browser. The speeds of the data communications services have steadily increased as service providers have migrated the networks to newer generation technologies with broadband data communication capabilities, and the mobile stations have steadily advanced to take advantage of the new network technologies. The data communication capabilities of the mobile stations and the broadband data communication services offered by the networks enable users to perform more and more tasks from their mobile stations.
Shopping has also evolved with the evolution to telecommunications technologies. On-line shopping is now commonplace, and increasingly, users can do their on-line shopping using their mobile stations. On-line shopping may be for content for downloading to the mobile device (e.g. text, video, audio or mixed multimedia) or a product or service related to the mobile station, such as an application program (“app”), for installation in the mobile station. Examples of mobile station content items include, without limitation, media, games, messaging, social networks, stores, and any other application for use on or with a mobile device, for example a smartphone or PDA. In any purchase, a recommendation from a friend is a particularly strong way to influence a purchase decision. While users may discuss particular mobile station content items with friends, it is difficult to ascertain quickly the mobile station content items that friends actually have downloaded or purchased. Further, the incentive for users to recommend a mobile station content item to their friends is limited.
Hence, a need exists for an improved method of distributing recommendations, for example, which provides a user with an incentive to provide other users or potential customers with recommendations as to which a mobile station content items to download.